Since the whole quarantine thing started, I have fallen into a daily “routine” . So I’m going to give you a little insight as to what that is.. 1- wake up around 10:30 am. 2- go downstairs to make peanut butter and banana toast with coffee for breakfast. 3- eat breakfast. 4- go back upstairs and clean up any mess in my room. 5- do “homework”. 6- walk my dog at some point. 7- watch too many episodes of CSI. 8- have dinner. 9- watch a movie with my family. 10- lay in bed and watch tik toks until I eventually go to sleep around midnight. So as you can see, my days have lacked any real excitement. I enjoy walking my dog and having my morning toast. I enjoy having a clean room and no stress when it comes to school. I just wish I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with this. We don’t know for sure when we’ll return to school (or if we will at all). I don’t know when the next time I will get to hug my grandparents is!!! I’m so used to spending every Sunday at brunch with my grandparents and our friend carol. Carol is in her later 70’s and her husband is in a nursing home. She just informed us that her husband has the virus and she probably will never be able to see him again. This is the first person that I personally know being affected by the virus- but it’s very hard to know that she has been alone through this entire quarantine and is now possibly going to lose her husband. This blog was all over the place- I guess all I can say is send out love to everyone you know, because they probably need it.

I woke up this morning to find out that my senior spring showcase for show choir has been officially cancelled. I have really been trying to keep a positive attitude with this quarantine thing. After all, I have already been to two proms… so losing this one wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. It would still be devastating to not be able to wear the light blue dress that made me feel good about myself for the first time ever. It would’ve been nice to have gotten to spend this prom with my current group of friends who actually appreciate me. But missing out on it wouldn’t have been the end of the world. But finding out that spring show is cancelled, truly felt like a punch in the stomach. Since I made show choir at the end of my eighth grade year, I have been waiting for the moment I would get to take the stage for my senior solo. I have gone through my entire highschool experience waiting for that one moment that I would take the stage and sing a whole song to showcase the four years of blood sweat and tears that I had put into Center Stage. I have tons of family who always said they would come to my senior spring show. They excused not coming to my other performances by saying they wanted to save it up for the show where I would have my senior solo. Something that really frustrates me is that everyone in our family makes it a priority to go see my cousins when they have a play or musical. My whole familys makes it a huge deal and goes on about it for weeks. I finally had made it to weeks before the show where everyone had planned to come and support me. Just weeks until I had MY moment. Now it’s cancelled. I know there are bigger things than me and I have really been trying to stay positive. But this has made me realize just how shitty it can be to allow yourself to be excited about things.

I have not had an iced vanilla latte in weeks. I am starting to think that I need them to thrive and blossom as a person. Coffee from home is alright when you have nothing else to drink, but knowing that there is a starbucks AND a dunkin donuts less than five minutes away from me is truly the most tempting thing. I’m glad my USbank app only tells me how much money I have spent at ‘restaurants’ each month. If it specified how much money I had spent on coffee alone, you might be able to classify it as me having a serious issue. All I know is that if I had every dollar that I have ever spent on coffee and I saved it instead, I would be way better off than I am now with my $127.98. Since the whole quarantine thing got really serious, I have not been scheduled at work. They are only scheduling the full time workers, which I totally respect and understand. It just makes it a lot harder to online shop when you have no source of income currently. I’m really trying not to spend my money because I know that if I do spend it all online, once the lockdown lifts in St. Louis, I will want to go out to eat with friends and go shopping. I can’t do any of that without any money. Who knows? Maybe they’ll end up scheduling me at work next week.

My plants are dead. I had a very beautiful bowl with six perfect succulents. Their names were Monica, Chandler, Joey, Ross, Rachel and Pheobe. They were happy and looking at them made me happy. Until I forgot to water them for four months. I realized too late that they were shriveled up and rotting. My mom yelled at me for not taking better care of them and then she proceeded to walk around my room with her watering can and watered every other plant in my room. They all needed it, but I lied and told her I had watered them the night before. It makes me sad that I can keep a job and a decent GPA, but I can’t remember to water my damn succulents. I look at them every day and even have alarms set to water them, but something always gets in the way. Sometimes it’s my bed that gets in the way. I am a culprit of using sleep as an excuse to not do something I need to do. It’s sad that my plants are on the receiving end of my bad procrastination. RIP to the entire friends cast.

I have spent these past few weeks trying to better myself. I have gotten good sleep, I have (attempted) eating healthy. I have walked/ ran with my dog at least two miles every day. I have aggressively cleaned my room and reorganized it. And most importantly, I HAVE COMPLETELY RID MY MIND OF THE TOXICITY THAT IS TRIGONOMETRY. Whoever decided that I should take trig my second semester senior year (MY MOM), obviously wanted me to remember my last few months of childhood as painful and suffering. Just opening up my backpack to see the trig note packet on the top of my binder brought literal tears to my eyes. I get math help on a regular basis. I’d say almost daily. The fact that now I’m going to have to do it ONLINE???? The thought honestly triggers me more than I’d like to admit. Mr. Neinhaus, I know you will hopefully not be reading this- but please just remember that numbers make me really sad- and I have purposefully destroyed everything in my house that even slightly resembles a triangle as a coping mechanism for the true misery that trigonometry brings me. 😦

Explaining Apple products to your grandparents might be one of the most frustrating things on Earth. First they don’t remember their password to open the damn thing, then they realize they don’t have their glasses on and they need to go get them so they can read the screen. My Grandpa has gotten a lot better with Apple products over the past few months. We bought him an Ipad for his emails and facetime. He can do very basic things on his Ipad and every now and then will call and ask how to do something we’ve already taught him before. My Grandma on the other hand, has no concept of how any electronic other than a flip phone works. She thought the other day that only one person could talk on facetime at a time- so after my grandpa was done talking to us and handed her the ipad, she hung up and called us again since it was now HER turn to facetime. I don’t really mind these little tiffs with them, though. Any time spent with them is precious to me and in the end, I’m really just glad that in times like this that we can facetime them. They have been very lonely during the quarantine, especially because they really can’t go out because of their age. We haven’t been able to go see them either because my dad still goes out to work every day and we don’t want to end up getting them sick accidentally. Hopefully this all blows over soon.

Something that has been keeping me going through all of this Corona stuff, has been Brandon. We met about 6 months ago via mutual friends. He left for the military in February, and he’s been writing me letters. It’s nice to know that someone who is going through something so intense like basic training is still willing to make time to write to me. He’s very sweet, and maybe a little bit too optimistic about long distance relationships- but he’s really great to have around. He’s definitely a breath of fresh air compared to the guys I usually am interested in. If my ex had left for the military when we were together, I would’ve been lucky to get a goodbye. I just hope that this can all work out with Brandon in the end. I find it very hard to be optimistic and hopeful in any relationship type of situation, so having any sort of good feelings about this one has made me realize that having something to wish for can really impact your life in a good way. I’m trying to remain positive about all of this- and thank god for Brandon’s letters giving me something to look forward to other than graduation… if that even happens.

I haven’t been doing my blogs at the rate that I should be. In all honesty, it’s just because I have nothing to write about. I have been sitting in my house for twelve days. The corona virus sucks. My mom decided the first day of spring break that we were going to start being overly cautious about our health. Since my Grandparents are over eighty years old, we have to be especially careful to not give them some sort of disease that their immune system can’t fight off. I have no problem with social distancing and now ‘quarantining’ knowing that there is other people’s health on the line. While I understand its importance, quarantining has been very tough to stick with. A lot of my friends and family members decided to travel, even with the worldwide travel warnings and limitations. Their excuse for this was, “I’m not cancelling my trip to Mexico for some stupid virus.”, or “it’s basically just the flu, it won’t kill you”. At first I thought they were all stupid for traveling… but now that I’ve been stuck in my house for nearly two weeks, my opinion has slowly changed into “well… at least they got to go somewhere… we’re all getting quarantined anyways.”

Sorry I’m a bitch. Words come out of my mouth faster than my brain can process what I am saying. At the same time; however, I never really have bad intentions. People overall think I am a pretty nice person… they just always say that I am “very honest”, which in my opinion is a good thing! Something that you rarely see these days, is someone who is willing to tell you the truth when it’s hard to hear. If someone asks me for my opinion, then they should be prepared to hear honesty, not the sugar coated bullshit that most teenagers spew out in hopes of making that person feel better about themselves. I try to be nice and I really do try to keep my mouth shut for the most part, it is just very hard to do so when people keep pushing and pushing. Over the past few years my filter has gotten stronger, but I still see a need for more honesty in our society. Don’t go to your friend after you just punched someone in the face for no reason and say “It’s okay that I did this, right? Like I think it’s totally fine to hurt people for no reason at all” and expect the person you asked to say “Oh yes! It’s totally fine! Lets go punch random people after school too!”. Just because you want to hear those reassuring words, doesn’t mean that’s what you should hear.

So this is kind of a funny situation. A few days ago, a senior and his underclassman girlfriend came into Mi Lupita for dinner. They sat in my section.. And the senior starts to pull a fake ID on me, asking for a margarita. Since I knew they both attended my high school, I knew he was underaged. He probably had no idea who I was, which was totally fine… but he asked the wrong person for a drink. I called him out on his fake ID and said “Sorry I can’t get you a margarita, because we go to school together and are in the same grade. I know you’re not 21.” He seemed pissed about it and then ordered water. I have been told on multiple occasions by my bosses and managers, that we are supposed to confiscate fake IDs and turn them into the police. I didn’t take his ID, especially because I didn’t feel like getting the girl in trouble. They both ended up running out before I could come back with their waters. Over all the situation made me laugh. I think it’s funny how kids can go into an establishment with a fake ID and try to use it… when the consequences of getting caught can cause their server to lose their job. Also, had he gotten the drink and left while intoxicated and gotten pulled over or gotten into an accident, it would’ve come back to me. I could lose my job, get arrested and my restaurant could lose their license.